Did Fallen Riverside Soldier Commit Suicide? UPDATE with Elected Officials Directory Link!

I was directed to a story which is running in the Iowa City Press-Citzen today, March 18th, 2008, and written by Kathryn Fiegen, which relates the story of a deceased soldier from Riverside, Iowa, and his "supposed" suicide!

The family of a fallen Riverside soldier said they still have unanswered questions after receiving the results recently of an investigation into his death that concluded he killed himself in Iraq.

Initial reports said U.S. Army Sgt. James Musack, 23, of Riverside, was killed in a non-combat related incident Nov. 21, 2006, in Samarra, Iraq. He was serving his second tour of duty in Iraq with the 4th Infantry Division out of Fort Hood, Texas. The U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command investigated the death and concluded in December 2007 that it was a suicide.
However, Musack's sister, Morgan Rorex, 20, of Coralville, said her family doesn't believe Musack killed himself just days before he was supposed to come home from Iraq.
"We didn't think that's what happened," she said. "There's too many inconsistencies."
Musack's family received the results of the investigation in the mail two weeks ago. The report is more than 100 pages long and includes interviews with unit members, the family and friends who last spoke to Musack, the results of forensic tests and diagrams of where his body was found. Many of the details, including the names of who was interviewed, were redacted.
Christopher Grey, Chief of Public Affairs for the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, said Musack's death was "thoroughly investigated."
"We stand by the findings of this investigation," he said. "My heart goes out to the family, of course, but at this point, we stand by our investigation."
According to the report, Musack was found 67 meters from the southeast corner of Patrol Base South in the Al-Taji area of Iraq about 9:45 a.m. Nov. 21. He was found lying on his right side, with his left shoulder slumped over his body. The unit members who found him said in the interviews that Musack's M4 rifle was parallel to his body with the barrel pointed toward his head and his left arm was draped over it. The report said he died of a gunshot wound to his head.
Musack had arrived at the base the day before to train members of another unit, and the area he in which was found was used as a restroom or private area to make phone calls by other soldiers at the base, the report said.
Rorex said the family is questioning a few aspects of the report, starting with the soldier interviews.
Unit members who were interviewed about the death said Musack was generally happy but kept to himself. They said Musack had no enemies in the unit and didn't express any family, financial or emotional distress. They also said he was excited to go home and talked about buying a house in Texas.
The report also said Musack was not being treated for mental illness, taking medication or receiving counseling.
On the day of his death, soldiers said nothing seemed out of the ordinary, except Musack seemed to be smoking more than usual. He was last seen stepping out to smoke about 5:15 a.m. or 5:20 a.m. The report said gunshots were heard near the base about 6 a.m.
"Why would no one go to look for him until 9:45?" Rorex said. "It doesn't make sense."
Interviews with family members and friends paint a different picture than what the soldiers said.
Rorex said her mother, Yvette Eastom of Glenpool, Okla., and aunt, DeeAnna Newlin of Tulsa, Okla., were interviewed. In their statements, in the days before his death Musack was paranoid and edgy. He said he was being "set up" and said he had seen something he shouldn't have seen involving the death of a little girl and he had to "watch his back." Musack told his family he didn't think he was coming home.
Rorex said he didn't provide many details to his family about the little girl because he thought the calls were being recorded, but she thinks the incident led to his death.
Eastom said she and her sister told her son not to say anything about the little girl because he was two weeks away from coming home.
"It will probably be a decision I'll regret the rest of my life," she said.
Eastom said she is communicating with U.S. senators in her state and will tell "anyone who will listen" that Musack's case should be re-investigated.
Grey said occasionally credible information comes up after investigations wrap up and the cases are re-opened, but not often.
Rorex said the family just wants some peace.
"We just want to figure out what really happened to James," she said


There are several articles out there concerning the large number of "suicides" occurring among our Troops, but if his family is correct, there may be another motive for his "death". We have seen other rapes, and murders that are just now coming to light, and if he was in the "know" of such a situation, it may have led to his "death"!

Please take the time to write your Congressmen and Senators and request a new look at this case. Perhaps Sgt. Musack, did commit suicide, and our hearts go out to his family, but if there is something more sinister at work, they deserve to know the truth, and we as citizens deserve to have our military act accordingly!! Get Dr. Michael Baden to do an autopsy, and put the best investigators on this case, to find the "truth", whatever that "truth" might be!!

In either case, May Sgt. James Musack, Rest In Peace, and let's help bring some peace to his family!! Thank You!!


Did Fallen Riverside Soldier Commit Suicide? UPDATE with Elected Officials Directory Link!

39 Killed In Iraq

In a story I was just reading there were at least 39 people killed across Iraq on Tuesday, including 16 in a bomb attack against a bus on Tuesday as US and Iraqi officials began talks on the future US military presence in the country.

The day's biggest attack was against a passenger bus travelling from the southern port city of Basra to Nasiriyah when it was struck by a bomb, some 430 kilometers (265 miles) south of Baghdad, Nasiriyah police Lieutenant Colonel Ali Siwan said.

At least 16 people were killed and 22 wounded, he said. Elsewhere in Iraq, 22 people were killed, including eight when a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden car against a checkpoint manned by Iraqi soldiers and members of a local group fighting Al-Qaeda in Iraq, police said.

The attack took place in Dhuluiya, 70 kilometres (45 miles) from the capital in Salaheddin province, at around 3:15 pm (1215 GMT), police Lieutenant Colonel Mohammed Khalid said.

Around 80,000 Iraqis, mostly Sunni Arabs, have allied with the US military by forming local Al-Sahwa, or Awakening, groups to fight Al-Qaeda. The US military-funded groups have increasingly faced attacks from extremists. Elsewhere, 19 people were killed in clashes between militants and security forces, including 10 in the central Shiite city of Kut and nine in the northern city of Mosul, security officials said. In Basra a civilian was shot dead by gunmen, police said.

The latest violence came a day after insurgents killed eight US soldiers, making Monday the deadliest day for American forces in seven months. Five were killed and three wounded in a suicide attack in Baghdad's once upscale neighbourhood of Mansur, the military said, while insurgents killed three more US troops and their interpreter in Diyala province, the theatre of a joint US-Iraqi sweep of Al-Qaeda targets. The latest violence bring the US military's death toll since the March 2003 invasion to 3,983, according to an AFP tally based on independent website www.icasualties.org.

The mounting toll comes at a time when the military is reducing troop numbers amid claims that daily violence has fallen since August. The military's losses in Iraq are one of the key issues in the US presidential election and have hit the campaign of President George W. Bush's Republican party. Meanwhile, the foreign ministry announced the start of talks between US and Iraqi officials on the future of the US military presence in Iraq. "The two parties started today, in the ministry of foreign affairs, talks .... on agreements and arrangements for long-term cooperation and friendship, including agreement on temporary US troop presence in Iraq," the ministry said. The talks follow a November agreement between Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki setting a July 31 target date to formalise US-Iraq economic, political, and security relations.

At the time Maliki said the accord sets 2008 as the final year for US-led forces to operate in Iraq under a UN mandate, which the new bilateral arrangement would replace. The agreements will work out the future role and number of US forces in Iraq in the shadow of the November 2008 US presidential election, despite sky-high American public opposition to the war. When finalised, the new agreement would trigger the end of UN sanctions imposed after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and return full sovereignty to the government in Baghdad. "The United Nations is working to help Iraqis make 2008 the year of Iraqi sovereignty," UN Special Representative to Iraq Staffan de Mistura said at a press conference in Najaf. The talks between the two delegations are expected to cover issues such as whether Washington would have permanent bases in Iraq, how many US troops would be stationed here, and for how long. The final deal would require the approval of the Iraqi parliament.

Another bloody day, that indicates the lull in violence created by the surge, may be coming to an end, as the enemy has regrouped, and found areas to target!!

Bombs Kill 24 In Pakistan

In what has started as a bloody day in Pakistan, massive suicide bombs ripped through a seven-story police headquarters and a business on Tuesday, killing at least 24 people and wounding more than 200 others in attacks that deepened Pakistan's security crisis.


The two blasts happened about 15 minutes apart in different districts of this eastern city. The first tore the facade from the Federal Investigation Agency building as staff were beginning their working day. City police chief Malik Mohammed Iqbal said a car packed with explosives was driven into a parking lot and detonated next to the building, which houses a department of the federal police's anti-terrorism unit.

Twenty-one people were killed, including 16 police, officials said. Doctors at Lahore hospitals said the wounded included 32 girls who were hit by flying debris at a school near the police building. Paramedics carried a bloodied body on a stretcher from the building, while volunteers sifted through the rubble with bare hands, apparently searching for survivors.

Uzair Ahmed, a watchman guarding a bungalow, said he heard a deafening boom and something hit him in the head and face. "I rushed out in panic ... Everybody was running and crying. Smoke was all around and that was it. I only came to my senses in the hospital," Ahmed, his head bandaged, said from his hospital bed. Scores of nearby houses sustained major damage. Gates and doors were torn off, windows blown in and air conditioners dislodged and left in the street. "It was like hell let loose on us," said homeowner Fazal Muqeem, 42. Tariq Pervez, the director-general of the Federal Investigation Agency, said it had earlier received information that it could be attacked, but the reports had pointed to an attack against its headquarters in the capital, Islamabad, not in Lahore. He gave no further details. The second bombing hit an advertising agency at a house in an upscale neighborhood less than 50 yards from a residence owned by Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and co-chairman of her party. Police officials declined to speculate on whether that was the intended target. Zardari was in Islamabad at the time.

Salman Batalwi, chief executive of the SB&B agency, said the children of his gardener had been killed and several workers seriously wounded. "Nobody would want to target us. Maybe it's the wrong address or whatever," Batalwi told Dawn News television. The bombings come amid a spate of violence that authorities are blaming on Taliban and al-Qaida-linked militants, spreading beyond their strongholds along the Afghan border, and as the victors of last month's elections prepare to form a new government.

There have been at least seven suicide attacks in the three weeks since the Feb. 18 vote.

The party of Nawaz Sharif, set to be the junior partner in the incoming coalition, blamed military operations ordered by U.S.-backed President Pervez Musharraf for destabilizing the country and called for him to resign."He has carried out indiscriminate operations in the tribal areas that have opened up new fault lines in Pakistani society," party spokesman Ahsan Iqbal said. A spokesman for the country's largest Islamic group, Jamaat-e-Islami, blamed Musharraf's friendship with the U.S. for a campaign of attacks inside Pakistan.

"It started when we started having a friendship with America. There were no suicide bombings in this country before that," Syed Munawar Hasan told Dawn News television service. "Unless there are whole domestic and foreign policy changes, I don't think this is going to stop." Musharraf condemned the "savage" bombings and said they "cannot deter" the government's resolve to fight the scourge of terrorism "with full force," according to a statement carried by the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan. After the attacks, small groups of city residents enraged by the bombing gathered on Lahore's main Mall Road, chanting "Musharraf is a dog, Musharraf is a pimp." Police were deployed to keep order but no trouble was reported. Until recently, Lahore had been spared the suicide attacks that have struck all other major cities in the past year. But now it has suffered three attacks within two months. On Jan. 10, a militant walked into a crowd of police guarding a courthouse and blew himself up, killing 24. A double suicide attack in Lahore killed four people at a navy training college last week.

Tuesday's violence was the first major act of terrorism since Sharif's and Bhutto's parties announced over the weekend they would form a coalition government after routing Musharraf's allies in the Feb. 18 parliamentary elections. The parties are vowing to restore judges axed by Musharraf to secure his own re-election last year — setting them on a collision course with a key U.S. ally in its war on terror.

There will be updates as they become available!

Bloody Beginning Of The Week In Baghdad

It is turning into a very bloody beginning to the week in Iraq as bombers struck four times in Baghdad and at three locations north of the capital Monday with explosions aimed at an array of targets: a U.S. military foot patrol, a hotel in the typically safe Kurdish region, a police station, and civilians near a hospital and a mosque, authorities and witnesses said.

With a combined death toll of at least 16— including five American service members— none of the seven blasts was as powerful as the twin bombings that killed 68 people last Thursday in a Baghdad shopping district. It wasn't clear whether any of Monday's bombers acted in coordination.

Still, Iraqi officials interpreted the wave of attacks as Sunni Muslim insurgents reasserting their presence at a time when violence had dipped to record lows and families were tentatively venturing out of their walled-off neighborhoods.

Two of the explosions occurred in militia-controlled Shiite Muslim districts, signaling that bombers still can strike in the heart of Mahdi Army territory. Another blast ripped through a hotel in the cultural hub of Sulaimaniyah in the autonomous northern Kurdish region, which is typically among the safest places in Iraq .

In central Baghdad , five U.S. troops died after an apparent suicide bomber wearing an explosives vest approached an American patrol in the once-upscale neighborhood of Mansour, according to the U.S. command in Baghdad .

Four of the soldiers were killed at the scene and another died later from his wounds, the military said in a statement. Another three U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter were wounded. Iraqi police say that an Iraqi civilian also was killed.

More updates as they become available!!

Bloody Monday In Baghdad

In a sad story coming out of Baghdad this morning dozens of people were killed and dozens more were wounded Monday, when two suicide car bombs exploded in different parts of Baghdad, police said.

Neither of the attacks took place in the areas of the sprawling city where Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was visiting. Also Monday, the U.S. military reported finding a grave with 14 bodies, believed to be members of the Iraqi security forces executed by al-Qaida in Iraq.

In Baghdad's deadliest attack, a suicide car bomber killed at least 22 people and wounded 43 in central Baghdad's Bab al-Mudham neighborhood on the eastern bank of the Tigris. Associated Press Television News footage showed a 6.5-foot crater blown into the street by the explosion, which destroyed numerous cars and trucks and littered the area with shrapnel and debris.

A bloody beginning to a new week,and a new month for the Iraqi's!

Turkish Troops Kill 41 More Rebels

The news out of northern Iraq indicates that the Turkish Troops are continuing with their incursion to hunt and kill PKK Rebels.

Turkey's military said Monday it had killed 41 more separatist Kurdish rebels in clashes in northern Iraq, raising the reported guerrilla death toll in a cross-border operation to 153. A statement posted on the military's Web site also said two more soldiers were killed in fighting, but gave no details. The deaths would drive the total Turkish military fatalities since the start of the incursion Thursday to 17. It said the military had hit some 30 targets of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK in the last 24 hours.

Turkey said its troops fired dozens of salvos of artillery shells at suspected rebel hideouts Monday and clashed with the rebels in four parts of northern Iraq. It did not specify the locations. It said troops were destroying rebel shelters, logistic centers and ammunition. Retreating rebels were setting booby traps under the corpses of dead comrades or planting mines on escape routes, the military said.

The Iraqi government began asking the Turkish Troops to leave yesterday, but as of today it would seem that they have no intention of leaving yet!!



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140 Afghans Killed In 2 Days Of Bombings

The story coming out of Afghanistan is of another increase in violence as a suicide car bomber kills 38 Afghans at a crowded market Monday, pushing the death toll from two days of militant bombings to about 140.

The marketplace blast, which targeted a Canadian army convoy, came a day after the country's deadliest insurgent attack since a U.S. invasion defeated the Taliban regime in late 2001. The toll from that bombing in a crowd watching a dog fight rose to more than 100. The back-to-back blasts in the southern province of Kandahar could be a sign insurgents are now willing to risk high civilian casualties while attacking security forces. Though their attacks occasionally have killed dozens, militants in Afghanistan have generally sought to avoid targeting civilians, unlike insurgents in Iraq's war.

The violence and attacks are a concern for a country once thought to be headed for renewal. The Taliban, and al-Qaeda terrorists have regrouped, and are on the offensive, all because we got blinded by Iraq, and we did not finish the job in Afghanistan first!! It is a sad day for our troops and for the Afghans, who are dying on a daily basis!!


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Did Bomb And Karma Catch Up With Terrorist

Is the death of Imad Mughniyah a karmic act for his past deeds, or just another assassination of someone to take attention away from real threats, and terrorists.

It took the assassination of Imad Mughniyah for the world to finally get a glimpse of what this most elusive and ruthless of Islamic militants actually looked like. He lived in the shadows of Middle Eastern violence his entire adult life, allegedly altering his features through plastic surgery, travelling on an Iranian diplomatic passport on unscheduled flights and never giving interviews or releasing video-taped statements. The only pictures of Mughniyah, 45, publicly available were a few grainy black and white snaps from the 1980s, portraying a serious, sallow-faced young man with a black pointed beard.

Hours after announcing his death in a car bomb blast in a Damascus suburb, the Shi'ite Hizballah organization's television channel, Al Manar, broadcast a more recent picture of Mughniyah. It showed a plump, middle-aged man wearing combat fatigues and a forage cap and sporting a thick beard streaked with grey. His wire-framed spectacles gave him a benign, almost professorial, look, belying the fact that Mughniyah stood accused of killing more Americans than any other militant before the attacks of September 11, 2001.

It will be interesting to see "who" actually killed this "terrorist", and also to find out if all of the events he was blamed for committing, were actually his handiwork, or if he was just a convenient scapegoat to drop everything on. We shall watch and report if anything substantive comes of the investigation!! So did Karma catch up with this alleged "terrorist", or was it just a bomb??!!


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Another Shooting Takes Place

In what is surely a sad way to end the week if Sunday is your last day, or too start the week if that is the case, we have another young gunmen shooting and killing innocent people. It seems like after every Big shooting event, there are numerous smaller, maybe copycat style shootings in the weeks after the initial Big shooting.

So here is the first of what may be a rash of similar shootings, a gunman killed two people at a training center dormitory for young Christian missionaries early Sunday after being told he couldn't spend the night, and hours later four people were shot outside a church in Colorado Springs.

It was not immediately known whether the shootings, about 65 miles apart, were related. No arrests had been made in either attack by afternoon.

Sad news for the victims, their families, their friends, and our nation, as we collectively share in their loss. Sadly in what seems to be a weekly event, We send Prayers and condolences to them All!! Take Care!


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Spc. David Berhle Is A Hero

I just finished reading a very tough story about another Iowa killed in Iraq and laid to rest yesterday in Woodbridge Cemetary in Tipton. The story said that over 1200 people were in attendance and that the service was conducted in the Tipton Middle School gymnasium.
On May 19th Specialist David Berhle was killed during combat operations, when an explosive device detonated next to the vehicle he was operating. Specialist David Berhle had enlisted in the United States Army in June 2005 and was stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, and was later deployed to Iraq in October of 2006.
It is a heartbreaking story anytime, but particularly coming as it does just after Memorial Day, when the nation paid tribute to everyone who has sacrificed their lives, so that we could remain free.
It is a good story of what sounds like a great young man, as people who knew him from 1st grade and into adulthood related their stories of David Berhle, the hardworking and happy person that they had known and loved.
I only know of this young man from this story and I wish to send my sincerest regrets and condolences to his family and friends. He is a hero and shall be remebered for the ultimate sacrifice of giving his life so that we might be free of terror on our home soil again, by fighting the terrorists overseas.
I hope you will give the story a read, and let his family and friends know how much you thank Specialist David Berhle, for what he was doing to protect us all.
The story ends with a note that a David Berhle Memorial Fund has been set up. Please contribute as a gesture of your appreciation for his life and too early death, thank you.
David is a hero